


Everything You Ever

by Pippin



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Coming Out, M/M, Stanley Cup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 19:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8502406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: "Here lies everythingThe world I wanted at my feetMy victory's completeSo hail to the king."





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was in history class and for some reason thought of the song Everything You Ever from Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and then this happened. Definitely go listen to the song.
> 
> Also, I've got a lot of comments either saying that they weren't expecting the death or asking me to tag it. I don't have problems tagging things, but guys, it's already tagged. I put it on as an archive warning before I posted this and since I got comments asking me to tag it, I put it in the tags as well. So yeah, major character death ahead.

Game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Las Vegas Aces 4, Providence Falconers 4.

Less than a minute left in the third period.

_“And Jack Zimmermann pulls the puck straight out from under the skates of former Juniors teammate and Aces captain Kent Parson.  Across to Alexei Mashkov, back to Zimmermann, and—Zimmermann gets the hat trick in the final seconds of the game to win the first ever Stanley Cup for the Providence Falconers!  The only thing that could make this better would be if they had won it on home ice.”_

Nothing felt real.  Not even his teammates crashing into him at top speed, screaming and crushing him, not even winning the MVP, not even finally getting the chance to hoist the Cup, not even the look on his father’s face as he shouted words of praise over the hubbub, not even the endless stream of microphones and cameras shoved in his face.  It was everything he had ever wanted and it completely felt like some unfathomable dream, one of the best he’d ever had.  There was no way that this was actually happening to him.

The one person he wanted to share this victory with wasn’t here.  Jack wanted nothing more than to kiss Bitty at center ice as everyone celebrated and passed around the Cup.  He was so, so happy and Bitty would only make it better.  But Bitty was stuck in Georgia thanks to his job—the camp that he worked at started early the next morning and he couldn’t get back from Vegas in time.  Jack couldn’t even call or Skype his boyfriend given the absolute circus of media and family and fans and teammates high as fuck on adrenaline and excitement. 

The locker room cut through in bizarre bits and pieces—the reality of the win hadn’t struck Jack yet. 

Champagne was being poured over everything—it was in his hair, in his eyes—he was breaking his strict alcohol policy to drink champagne from the cup with his teammates—his father was dumping ice over his head—Tater was literally picking him up and spinning him around—

Jack was vaguely aware that his face hurt from smiling, that everything seemed bright and loud and normally that would scare him but he had just won the _fucking Stanley Cup_ and everything was perfect.

Once things finally calmed down a bit Jack grabbed his phone.  He had a ridiculous number of messages, a few from other friends and family (a decent number of whom may have been famous hockey players in their own right who were very impressed with both the win and his own performance), but most were from the SMH group chat.

 **Me:** Gotta go, guys.  Warmups starting.  Talk to you after the game.  
**Eric Bittle:** Good luck! <3  
**Adam Birkholtz:** Fiiiiine!  
**Adam Birkholtz:** But good luck  
**Chris Chow:** Good luck Jack!!!  
**Justin Oluransi:** Mashkov scores!  
**Larissa Duan:** Nice assist.  
**Shitty Knight:** GOAL! JACK ZIMMERMANN! FUCKING BEAUT!!!!!  
**Eric Bittle:** Congrats!  
**Eric Bittle:** I have to go.  My parents and I convinced the sports bar in town to put on the game and they’re giving me looks for being on my phone :/  
**William Poindexter:** I’m fighting my brother to watch this game.  
**William Poindexter:** I’m losing  
**Chris Chow:** Oh no :(  
**Shitty Knight:** NOOOOOOOOO parson scored  
**Shitty Knight:** OH FUCK YES THAT IS HOW YOU REPLY  
**Shitty Knight:** JACK FUCKING ZIMMERMANN EVERYONE  
**Adam Birkholtz:** Go for the hatty!  
**Chris Chow:** Noooo the aces need to stop scoring  
**Justin Oluransi:** Damn, Aces lead.  
**Shitty Knight:** TIE GAME  
**Chris Chow:** okay I wish you guys had scored but that was a beautiful save  
**Justin Oluransi:** goalies, everybody  
**Shitty Knight:** LDSDHG LISRU;I TSUERIOTUSIRJLS  
**Shitty Knight:** FUCKFUCKFUCKCUFKCUFKCUFKCUCFFUFCKFKUCK  
**Eric Bittle:** I literally just started screaming and everyone’s staring at me like I’m crazy.  LIKE Y’ALL DON’T DO THE SAME OVER FOOTBALL.  
**Eric Bittle:** times like this I wish I could come out.  “Hey y’all my boyfriend just scored the game-winning goal in the last game of the Stanley Cup finals!”  I’m so proud, honey.  
**Justin Oluransi:** Stanley Cup winners and their boyfriends are temporarily exempt from fines.  Also congrats!!!!!!!  My whole family is screaming.   
**Adam Birkholtz:** Same here.  There may or may not be tears.    
**William Poindexter:** I’m guessing they won.  
**Chris Chow:** Yay!  Good job!  
**Derek Nurse:** They won on Jack’s game-winning-slash-hat-trick-completing goal.  
**William Poindexter:** Good job  
**Larissa Duan:** congrats  
**Larissa Duan:** also my art friends are judging me  
**Shitty Knight:** well fuck that

Jack smiled, shaking his head.  He also had a voicemail from Bitty, but before he got to listen to it, his phone chimed with a different text tone (Bitty had set the group text tone on his phone as the goal siren).

 **Kent Parson:** good game.   
**Kent Parson:** I mean I would have liked to win  
**Kent Parson:** but still good job  
**Me:** thanks  
**Kent Parson:** we should have won it together.  But you look happier than I’ve ever seen you.  That’s gotta count for something.

“Jack.”  Jack looked up at his parents, both of whom were as soaked in champagne as the team itself.  Bob looked as if he had won the cup again himself and Alicia bore the same expression she had throughout Jack’s entire life when he had done something to the best of his abilities and she was proud.

Before Jack could say anything to them, though, Tater burst in.  “We go to dinner.  Zimmboni parents and Zimmboni come with?”

“Hang on.  I have a voicemail to listen to.  From Bitty,” Jack said, shooting a pointed look at his parents.

They got the hint and left Jack alone, ushering Tater with them.  Bob worked on distracting the press so that Jack could have a minute.

 _“Hi, Jack.  You were so good tonight!”_   There was a moment of muffled conversation.  _“We’re on our way home from the bar—Mama and Coach want me to pass along their congratulations.  Coach may even be interested in hockey now!  But that last goal—the hatty—was amazing.  I’m so proud of you.  Also, Mama wants me to invite you down this summer.  Something about how she can’t believe that she knows this big shot hockey player.  She’s gonna play up you coming, I promise you that.  As if you’re any different than you were last time you were down.  Well, I mean, you have a Stanley Cup now, but still.  I’m hoping you can make it—I miss you!  Call me when you get a chance?  I know that probably won’t be tonight, but whenever you get the ti—”_

A horrible crashing noise cut off Bitty’s words and Jack froze.  That couldn’t be what it had sounded like.  It couldn’t.

There was a minute of static, then the message cut off.

Jack almost threw his phone across the locker room in his rush to call Bitty. 

There was no answer.

Desperate, Jack tried Suzanne, and then Coach.  Neither picked up.

“Jack?  What’s wrong?”

Jack looked up at his mom, then offered her his phone so that she could listen to Bitty’s voicemail for herself.

“I called Bits.  And his parents.  None of them picked up.”

“They might just not be able to get to their phones.  When I was in my car crash a few years ago I couldn’t get to my phone because I had to talk to the EMTs and the police.  That’s probably what they’re doing.  Don’t worry.  I know that you don’t want to hear it, but worrying isn’t going to fix anything.  Right now, focus on the win.  You’ve been waiting on this for a very long time.  Savor it.”

Jack nodded.  “I…I can do that.”

* * *

Everything was so shiny.  Jack had said fuck it to his alcohol rules and was well on his way to being completely shitfaced drunk—everyone, even his parents, had said that he deserved it after both the game he had played and, of course, the Stanley Cup win.  The team wasn’t leaving Vegas for a few days to give the players a chance to celebrate, and everyone was taking full advantage of it being, well, Vegas.

Jack thought that he could see Tater cuddled up to a blond—was that _Kent_? He decided not to even go there—several of his teammates on the dance floor, several more at the bar, but everything was so shiny and god, he was so drunk. 

 _Shitty would be proud,_ said some corner of his brain, which made him start giggling. 

But then he saw Tater and, yeah, that was definitely Kent, which made him miss Bitty so, so much.  He had wanted to wait until Bitty had graduated to propose, but damn it all if he was going to miss the opportunity to propose out of the fucking Stanley Cup.  It was going to happen.  Bitty was also a hockey player—he’d love the gesture.  And it combined two of the most important things to Jack.  And somehow in Jack’s spinning mind it made sense because using the Cup to propose showed how he was replacing hockey with Bitty.  Or something.  It wasn’t like he hadn’t bought a ring ages ago, keeping it stashed in the back of his closet shelf, the one that Bitty was too short to reach.

* * *

He didn’t really remember getting back to the hotel.  He had been in a booth in a bar, the Cup on the table, and then he was back in the hotel, stripping down and wrapping his entire body around a pillow (and wishing it was Bitty), and then he was waking up with a pounding headache and what felt like every muscle in his body aching something fierce.

Jack rolled out of bed, grimacing as he hit the floor, then managed to make his way to his feet and staggered to the bathroom.  This was why he had stopped drinking, at least in part. 

When he finally got out of the bathroom he noticed that Tater’s bed was empty, which was odd, but Jack didn’t really have time to think about it, given that about two seconds later he tripped over the pants that he had left on the floor when he had gotten back in the night before—earlier that morning?  He wasn’t sure.

Jack fished his phone out of his pocket, intending to see what everyone was up to.  They had a team group chat, which he was sure had blown up overnight, not to mention how the Samwell chat was sure to be.  He knew his friends.

His phone was dead, so Jack found his charger and waited for it to turn back on.

Once it was back, the notifications just started coming and coming.  There were the ones he was expecting, from his team and the Samwell team and everyone else that had seen the game.  Then there were also, to his surprise, about ten missed calls from Suzanne Bittle.

Shit, Bitty.  Jack had forgotten about his worry, about not being able to get ahold of his boyfriend. 

Suzanne had also left a handful of voicemails, so Jack listened to them, panic building as he did.

 _“Congratulations, Jack.  We’re all so proud of you.”_   Her voice cracked and she took a shaky breath.  _“I can’t do this as a voicemail.  Call me as soon as you get the chance.”_

Hands shaking, Jack called Suzanne back.

 _“Jack!  Congratulations again,”_ she said, trying to sound cheerful.  _“You played so well—a hat trick, Dicky said.”_

“You said that there was something that you couldn’t do over voicemail?” Jack said, trying to stave off the panic attack he could feel budding in his chest.

There was a moment of silence, punctuated by a sob.  _“There was a car crash last night on the way back from the bar.  A drunk driver hit us.  Coach and I, we were only a little scratched up.  The hospital released us last night.  Dicky, though…”_   She stopped and Jack could hear the sobs she was trying to muffle.  _“…he didn’t make it.  They say that he died on impact, that he didn’t feel any pain.  But…”_ She gave up and just cried.

Jack felt as if the entire world had turned to stone.  “…what?” he finally managed.

_“I’m so sorry to have to ruin your win.  I wanted to wait to tell you, to let you celebrate, but you had called all of us and Coach said that we had to tell you.  That keeping it a secret was only going to hurt you.  Dicky never said anything, but he talks about you the same way that his girl cousins talk about their boyfriends.  Were you…?”_

“Yeah,” Jack admitted.  It still hadn’t sunk in.  Bitty wasn’t dead.  This was some cruel joke played by the Bittles because they had found out their son was gay, that was all.  Never mind that Suzanne wouldn’t do that.  “I’m gonna propose.  On my Cup Day.  Out of the Cup.”

_“Dicky would have loved that.  But Jack, honey, I hate to say it, but he’s dead.  You can’t propose, you can’t get married, you can’t anything.  That being said, the funeral is on Tuesday.  Can you and your parents make it down?”_

“I’ll make it work.  I’ll make it work.  I’ll…”  The truth hit him, hard, and Jack broke, sobs tearing their way out of his chest. 

At some point he hung up the phone—he didn’t remember when—and curled into a ball on the floor, alternating between sobs and hyperventilation.

There was a knock on the door.  “Press conference in the ballroom in twenty minutes!”

Shit fuck.  He actually had to look presentable, to pretend that he was still riding the Stanley high and not crashing thanks to the worst news of his entire life.

 **Me:** Can I tell the rest of the team?  I want to be the one…they know about the two of us.  
**Suzanne:** Of course.

Jack set his phone aside for a moment to quickly throw on the clean suit in his bag and try to get his hair under control.  He knew that his face was a mess, so he used one hand to press a cool rag to it as he used the other to text.

 **Me:** Guys, I have something serious to tell you.  
**Shitty Knight:** did you propose to bits because I call best man  
**Chris Chow:**!!!  
**Me:** Haha. No.  I wish.  
**Me:** I just got off the phone with Suzanne Bittle.  
**Me:** They were coming back from watching the game and a drunk driver hit them and Bitty’s dead.  
**Me:** Press conference.  Gotta go.

Jack silenced his phone and left his room.  He didn’t look right, but hopefully he could chalk that up to his hangover and not the fact that he had been sobbing on his floor over the death of the boyfriend that no one knew that he had.  Although coming off a Stanley win…

As Jack entered the room with the rest of the team, he cornered Georgia.  “I’m coming out.”

“Great.  We’ll make a plan and—”

“No.  I’m coming out today.  Right now.  I need to.”

Georgia shook her head.  “Jack, you can’t come out on such short notice.  It’ll be impossible for us to handle.”

Jack was suddenly furious.  “You know what else is impossible to handle on short notice?  Finding out that my boyfriend _died_ last night while we were celebrating our win.”

“Are you serious?”

Jack nodded, biting deep into his cheek in an attempt to avoid breaking down into sobs again.  “I think now is a good time, what with the win and how I played yesterday.  And…I want to do it for Bitty.”

Georgia nodded.  “You can do it.  We’ll deal with the fallout as it comes.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

The press conference was a little rough.  Everyone was still on a win high, but they were also pretty much all hungover, something that the reporters seemed to find amusing.

“What are you all going to do now that you’ve won?” one asked.

The team answered down the line.  When it finally got to Jack, he took a deep breath.  Now was the time.

“I’m going to Georgia for the funeral of my boyfriend.”

No one said anything.  Then one reporter spoke up.  “So…you’re gay?”

“Bisexual,” Jack corrected.  “Attracted to men and women.  I was dating a member of my old college team, but this morning I found out that he was in a car crash last night and didn’t make it out alive.”  He swallowed the lump in his throat and focused on not starting to cry again.  “So I’m going to Eric’s funeral.  I’m leaving Providence about as soon as we touch down.  This wasn’t my original plan—my original plan was to _propose_ to Eric out of the Cup.”

“Instead,” Georgia cut in, “he’s taking the Cup to Eric’s funeral.”

Tater, who was seated next to Jack, looked over at him, an offended look on his face.  Jack braced himself for a homophobic comment—not that Tater would be mean, he didn’t think, but he was still worried. 

“You never say that you have boy, not girl!  This boy, the baker?  Bitty?” 

Jack nodded, mute, not trusting his voice.

“I am sorry, Zimmboni,” Tater murmured, laying his hand over Jack’s.

“If you need anything, the team is here for you,” Georgia said, glaring at the team, then turning the same look over on the reporters.  “Anyone—reporters, team members, anyone—who gives Jack hell for his orientation has the Falconers management to answer to.  We knew that he was bi when we signed him, and we were preparing for him to be the first NHL player to come out.  None of us, Jack included, were quite ready, but circumstances being what they are, Jack decided that this was the best time.”

* * *

Thankfully, Georgia made it incredibly easy for Jack to escape the press conference and get back up to his room.  Once there, he turned his phone back on.

 **Shitty Knight:** Jack this isn’t funny  
**Shitty Knight:** Don’t make jokes like that.  
**Larissa Duan:** jack wouldn’t joke about something like that  
**Chris Chow:** Wait Bitty’s dead  
**Justin Oluransi:** I’m watching the press conference and you don’t look good man (sorry)  
**Shitty Knight:** shit you just came out and said that bitty’s dead on national tv  
**Larissa Duan:** we got your back, bro  
**Adam Birkholtz:** ^^

The group chat was quieter than usual, but Jack assumed that they were in shock.  God knew that he was.

Someone knocked on the door.  “Leave me alone!” Jack shouted in French, not wanted to be bothered.  Not caring if anyone understood him.

“Jack, sweetheart.”  It was his mother’s voice.  “Please, let us in.”

He couldn’t keep his parents out.  Actually, now that they were here, Jack wanted nothing more than to be held by his mother like he was a child again and not a Stanley Cup-winning NHL player.

It was as if his mother had read his mind because as soon as she was in the room she sat on the bed and opened her arms and Jack crawled into them.  His father sat on his other side, holding Alicia’s hand and resting a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“I was going to marry him,” Jack whispered.  “I’d already bought the ring.  He was my forever.  And now…”

He couldn’t stop the tears.  He didn’t even try.  As soon as he started, his parents were gone in tears as well.  The three of them just sat there holding each other and crying.

* * *

The day of the funeral was bright and sunny and Jack glared at the sky as if it had personally offended him.  It had.  It shouldn’t have been that bright, not on the day of funeral, not now that Bitty was gone.

It was a closed casket funeral. 

“He was pretty beat up from the crash,” Suzanne explained, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“I never expected to outlive any of my grandchildren,” Bitty’s Moomaw said, staring at the coffin with an almost frightening intensity.

Jack wrapped his hand around the box in his pocket and walked up to Suzanne.  “I know that I can’t propose, but is it too much to ask that he be buried with the ring?  I want him to have it.”

Suzanne looked at Jack for a moment, then leaned in.  “Stay after everyone else goes to eat.  The casket can still be opened.  You can give it to him.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

As everyone filtered over to eat, Jack waved his parents and Samwell friends on.  “I’ll catch up.”

He stood alone next to the casket, although he was joined a moment later by Suzanne and Coach, who slowly opened the lid.

Suzanne was right, Bitty was pretty up.  But he was no more gorgeous than Jack had always found him, and his heart twisted to see him.

He hadn’t intended to kneel; his knees just gave out.

“Bits, Bitty, Eric.  God, I loved you.  I still love you.  You were always it for me.  I didn’t tell you, but I was going to propose.  It was going to wait and then we won the Cup and I was going to use it.  I mean, I wanted to kiss you at center ice when we won, but you weren’t there and god I’ll never get to kiss you again.  I was going to kiss you every day until we got old.  Well, every day that I wasn’t on a roadie.  But now I’ll never get to watch you grow old.  But this ring, it’s still yours.  You’re still it for me.  I love you, Bits.”

He carefully laid the ring in the casket and stood, freezing when Coach grabbed the ring.  “We need to do this right,” he said, carefully lifting his son’s left hand and handing the ring back to Jack.

“I understand if you don’t want to touch him—if that’s the case, I’ll do this.  But like I said, we need to do this right.”

Jack broke down again, tears clouding his vision as he carefully slid the ring onto Bitty’s hand where it sat as it should have as an engagement ring and then a wedding band as they lived their lives together.

* * *

Watching the burial was one of the hardest things Jack had ever had to do.  Until speeches started.

Shitty got everyone laughing, sort of.  “He would make jokes about checking killing him—‘bury me with my hockey stick and a cherry pie.’”

Jack was taken aback when Suzanne and Coach specifically asked him to speak.  “They don’t know,” Coach told Jack in a low voice.  “I know that you came out the other day.  Tell them about Dicky, how you wanted to marry him.  Please.”

Jack took a deep breath, staring at the headstone in front of him.  “The first time I met Bitty, I hated him.  I couldn’t believe that he was on my team.  And then the coaches through him on my line—this short guy who couldn’t take a check if his life depended on it.  As his captain, though, it was my responsibility to help him improve, with early morning practice.  He hated me, too, I’m pretty sure.  But over the year, something happened.  He grew on me.  We became friends.  He moved into the room across the hall from me for the next year.  We took a class together—it was on food, so of course Bitty loved it.  Now, I can’t cook, so when we had to recreate a historical recipe for our final we worked together and became that much closer. At the end of that year, I signed with the Providence Falconers and graduated.  At graduation my dad reminded me of something that my uncle said, and I realized how I actually felt about Bits.  So I ran across campus and kissed him.

“This past year was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Providence is only forty minutes from Samwell, so Bitty would come spend weekends with me whenever he could.  Everything in my life was finally falling into place.

“The best and worst day of my life were the same, although I didn’t know it at the time.  We won the Stanley Cup—for those of you who don’t follow hockey, that’s like winning the World Series or the Superbowl—and I had almost everything that I wanted.  Only one thing could have made it better—kissing my boyfriend at center ice.  Bitty was in Georgia, though, so that was out of the question.  I did decide, though, to use my Cup Day—my day with the Stanley Cup—to propose to Bitty.  He was everything that I wanted.  For years, the only thing that I cared about was hockey.  I nearly died when I was a teenager because of hockey, and when I finally got back on the ice I became even more of a ‘hockey robot.’  But Bitty shoved hockey out of its place.  Not that hockey didn’t matter, but Bitty mattered more.  Even when I finally got into the NHL, Bitty still mattered more.”

Everyone was crying, even the ones who were muttering through their tears about ‘those damned homosexuals.’  Jack took a deep breath.

“I loved Bitty.  I still love Bitty.  I have a Stanley Cup win, but I would give that up in a heartbeat, without even thinking about it, if that would bring him back.  He was my everything.  He’s being buried wearing the ring I bought to propose to him with.”

“Bitty, I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife.  I don’t know if I believe that you can hear me.  But I believe—I _know_ —that I love you and that I always will.”

**Author's Note:**

> So angst is kinda what I'm good (?) at. I can't write fluff (well, I can, but it's harder; I literally wrote all of this in a day and fluff takes time), but, if you guys want, I'm considering writing a happy version where Bitty only gets hurt in the crash and then Jack proposes out of the Cup and yay fluff. Thoughts?
> 
> I've only been to two funerals. The first was when I was seven and I barely remember it and the second was my great-grandma's and she was almost 101, so it wasn't tragic like this. There was definitely food. I mean, it was after the cemetery, but I took some liberties for the fic.
> 
> Comments are always appreciated. If not here, you can find me on tumblr at smallinsaneone.


End file.
